DESCRIPTION

Clones a repository into a newly created directory, creates
remote-tracking branches for each branch in the cloned repository
(visible using git branch -r), and creates and checks out an
initial branch that is forked from the cloned repository’s
currently active branch.

After the clone, a plain git fetch without arguments will update
all the remote-tracking branches, and a git pull without
arguments will in addition merge the remote master branch into the
current master branch, if any (this is untrue when "--single-branch"
is given; see below).

This default configuration is achieved by creating references to
the remote branch heads under refs/remotes/origin and
by initializing remote.origin.url and remote.origin.fetch
configuration variables.

OPTIONS

--local

-l

When the repository to clone from is on a local machine,
this flag bypasses the normal "Git aware" transport
mechanism and clones the repository by making a copy of
HEAD and everything under objects and refs directories.
The files under .git/objects/ directory are hardlinked
to save space when possible.

If the repository is specified as a local path (e.g., /path/to/repo),
this is the default, and --local is essentially a no-op. If the
repository is specified as a URL, then this flag is ignored (and we
never use the local optimizations). Specifying --no-local will
override the default when /path/to/repo is given, using the regular
Git transport instead.

--no-hardlinks

Force the cloning process from a repository on a local
filesystem to copy the files under the .git/objects
directory instead of using hardlinks. This may be desirable
if you are trying to make a back-up of your repository.

--shared

-s

When the repository to clone is on the local machine,
instead of using hard links, automatically setup
.git/objects/info/alternates to share the objects
with the source repository. The resulting repository
starts out without any object of its own.

NOTE: this is a possibly dangerous operation; do not use
it unless you understand what it does. If you clone your
repository using this option and then delete branches (or use any
other Git command that makes any existing commit unreferenced) in the
source repository, some objects may become unreferenced (or dangling).
These objects may be removed by normal Git operations (such as git commit)
which automatically call git gc --auto. (See git-gc[1].)
If these objects are removed and were referenced by the cloned repository,
then the cloned repository will become corrupt.

Note that running git repack without the -l option in a repository
cloned with -s will copy objects from the source repository into a pack
in the cloned repository, removing the disk space savings of clone -s.
It is safe, however, to run git gc, which uses the -l option by
default.

If you want to break the dependency of a repository cloned with -s on
its source repository, you can simply run git repack -a to copy all
objects from the source repository into a pack in the cloned repository.

--reference[-if-able] <repository>

If the reference repository is on the local machine,
automatically setup .git/objects/info/alternates to
obtain objects from the reference repository. Using
an already existing repository as an alternate will
require fewer objects to be copied from the repository
being cloned, reducing network and local storage costs.
When using the --reference-if-able, a non existing
directory is skipped with a warning instead of aborting
the clone.

NOTE: see the NOTE for the --shared option, and also the
--dissociate option.

--dissociate

Borrow the objects from reference repositories specified
with the --reference options only to reduce network
transfer, and stop borrowing from them after a clone is made
by making necessary local copies of borrowed objects. This
option can also be used when cloning locally from a
repository that already borrows objects from another
repository—​the new repository will borrow objects from the
same repository, and this option can be used to stop the
borrowing.

--quiet

-q

Operate quietly. Progress is not reported to the standard
error stream.

--verbose

-v

Run verbosely. Does not affect the reporting of progress status
to the standard error stream.

--progress

Progress status is reported on the standard error stream
by default when it is attached to a terminal, unless -q
is specified. This flag forces progress status even if the
standard error stream is not directed to a terminal.

--server-option=<option>

Transmit the given string to the server when communicating using
protocol version 2. The given string must not contain a NUL or LF
character. The server’s handling of server options, including
unknown ones, is server-specific.
When multiple --server-option=<option> are given, they are all
sent to the other side in the order listed on the command line.

--no-checkout

-n

No checkout of HEAD is performed after the clone is complete.

--bare

Make a bare Git repository. That is, instead of
creating <directory> and placing the administrative
files in <directory>/.git, make the <directory>
itself the $GIT_DIR. This obviously implies the -n
because there is nowhere to check out the working tree.
Also the branch heads at the remote are copied directly
to corresponding local branch heads, without mapping
them to refs/remotes/origin/. When this option is
used, neither remote-tracking branches nor the related
configuration variables are created.

--mirror

Set up a mirror of the source repository. This implies --bare.
Compared to --bare, --mirror not only maps local branches of the
source to local branches of the target, it maps all refs (including
remote-tracking branches, notes etc.) and sets up a refspec configuration such
that all these refs are overwritten by a git remote update in the
target repository.

--origin <name>

-o <name>

Instead of using the remote name origin to keep track
of the upstream repository, use <name>.

--branch <name>

-b <name>

Instead of pointing the newly created HEAD to the branch pointed
to by the cloned repository’s HEAD, point to <name> branch
instead. In a non-bare repository, this is the branch that will
be checked out.
--branch can also take tags and detaches the HEAD at that commit
in the resulting repository.

--upload-pack <upload-pack>

-u <upload-pack>

When given, and the repository to clone from is accessed
via ssh, this specifies a non-default path for the command
run on the other end.

--template=<template_directory>

Specify the directory from which templates will be used;
(See the "TEMPLATE DIRECTORY" section of git-init[1].)

--config <key>=<value>

-c <key>=<value>

Set a configuration variable in the newly-created repository;
this takes effect immediately after the repository is
initialized, but before the remote history is fetched or any
files checked out. The key is in the same format as expected by
git-config[1] (e.g., core.eol=true). If multiple
values are given for the same key, each value will be written to
the config file. This makes it safe, for example, to add
additional fetch refspecs to the origin remote.

Due to limitations of the current implementation, some configuration
variables do not take effect until after the initial fetch and checkout.
Configuration variables known to not take effect are:
remote.<name>.mirror and remote.<name>.tagOpt. Use the
corresponding --mirror and --no-tags options instead.

--depth <depth>

Create a shallow clone with a history truncated to the
specified number of commits. Implies --single-branch unless
--no-single-branch is given to fetch the histories near the
tips of all branches. If you want to clone submodules shallowly,
also pass --shallow-submodules.

--shallow-since=<date>

Create a shallow clone with a history after the specified time.

--shallow-exclude=<revision>

Create a shallow clone with a history, excluding commits
reachable from a specified remote branch or tag. This option
can be specified multiple times.

--[no-]single-branch

Clone only the history leading to the tip of a single branch,
either specified by the --branch option or the primary
branch remote’s HEAD points at.
Further fetches into the resulting repository will only update the
remote-tracking branch for the branch this option was used for the
initial cloning. If the HEAD at the remote did not point at any
branch when --single-branch clone was made, no remote-tracking
branch is created.

--no-tags

Don’t clone any tags, and set
remote.<remote>.tagOpt=--no-tags in the config, ensuring
that future git pull and git fetch operations won’t follow
any tags. Subsequent explicit tag fetches will still work,
(see git-fetch[1]).

Can be used in conjunction with --single-branch to clone and
maintain a branch with no references other than a single cloned
branch. This is useful e.g. to maintain minimal clones of the default
branch of some repository for search indexing.

--recurse-submodules[=<pathspec]

After the clone is created, initialize and clone submodules
within based on the provided pathspec. If no pathspec is
provided, all submodules are initialized and cloned.
This option can be given multiple times for pathspecs consisting
of multiple entries. The resulting clone has submodule.active set to
the provided pathspec, or "." (meaning all submodules) if no
pathspec is provided.

Submodules are initialized and cloned using their default settings. This is
equivalent to running
git submodule update --init --recursive <pathspec> immediately after
the clone is finished. This option is ignored if the cloned repository does
not have a worktree/checkout (i.e. if any of --no-checkout/-n, --bare,
or --mirror is given)

--[no-]shallow-submodules

All submodules which are cloned will be shallow with a depth of 1.

--separate-git-dir=<git dir>

Instead of placing the cloned repository where it is supposed
to be, place the cloned repository at the specified directory,
then make a filesystem-agnostic Git symbolic link to there.
The result is Git repository can be separated from working
tree.

-j <n>

--jobs <n>

The number of submodules fetched at the same time.
Defaults to the submodule.fetchJobs option.

<repository>

The (possibly remote) repository to clone from. See the
GIT URLS section below for more information on specifying
repositories.

<directory>

The name of a new directory to clone into. The "humanish"
part of the source repository is used if no directory is
explicitly given (repo for /path/to/repo.git and foo
for host.xz:foo/.git). Cloning into an existing directory
is only allowed if the directory is empty.

GIT URLS

In general, URLs contain information about the transport protocol, the
address of the remote server, and the path to the repository.
Depending on the transport protocol, some of this information may be
absent.

Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols (in addition, ftp,
and ftps can be used for fetching, but this is inefficient and
deprecated; do not use it).

The native transport (i.e. git:// URL) does no authentication and
should be used with caution on unsecured networks.

The following syntaxes may be used with them:

ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

git://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

http[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

ftp[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:

[user@]host.xz:path/to/repo.git/

This syntax is only recognized if there are no slashes before the
first colon. This helps differentiate a local path that contains a
colon. For example the local path foo:bar could be specified as an
absolute path or ./foo:bar to avoid being misinterpreted as an ssh
url.

The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:

ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

git://host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

[user@]host.xz:/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

For local repositories, also supported by Git natively, the following
syntaxes may be used:

/path/to/repo.git/

file:///path/to/repo.git/

These two syntaxes are mostly equivalent, except the former implies
--local option.

When Git doesn’t know how to handle a certain transport protocol, it
attempts to use the remote-<transport> remote helper, if one
exists. To explicitly request a remote helper, the following syntax
may be used:

<transport>::<address>

where <address> may be a path, a server and path, or an arbitrary
URL-like string recognized by the specific remote helper being
invoked. See gitremote-helpers[7] for details.

If there are a large number of similarly-named remote repositories and
you want to use a different format for them (such that the URLs you
use will be rewritten into URLs that work), you can create a
configuration section of the form: